Sister Jean "Jane" Marie Miller, CSJ
(S. Marie Kateri)
April 27, 1938 - January 14, 2023
Cheerful, generous, caring
James and Emma (Reed) Miller welcomed their second of five children — their first girl — on April 27, 1938. Her parents named her Jean Marie, though, she was known as Jane. Sister Jean said even though her legal name is Jean, she has answered to and has been known as Jane.
Her mother was a member of the Oneida Tribe, and her father was a Menominee Indian. They raised their family on the Menominee Indian Reservation in Keshena, Wisconsin. S. Jean mentioned that her parents spoke only English in their home since their tribes did not speak the same language. The children attended a school staffed by the Sisters of St. Joseph. Since the school was not on the reservation itself, all the students were boarders. The children lived in separate dormitories, but the boys and girls were in classes together. The school day began with attendance at 6:30 a.m. Mass with the sisters. Their father drove them to school on Sunday evening and picked them up on Friday afternoon.
When Sister Jarlath McManus came to do a vocation talk for the eighth grade students, she left materials for the girls to take home. Jean was very interested and brought them to her father to read. Afterwards, she asked him if she could enter the community. With her father’s permission, 15-year-old Jean entered the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in September of 1953. During her time at Carondelet, she mostly worked in the kitchen. She received the habit and the name Sister Marie Kateri on August 15, 1954.
After her profession of vows in 1956, she was assigned to Nazareth Home to serve in domestic work. While there, she had the opportunity to complete her high school education. Even though she worked eight hours a day, she persevered through tutoring with two sisters who came from Carondelet each week until she finished high school.
In 1960, she went to St. Joseph Carondelet Child Center in Chicago and served as a child care worker and houseparent. She returned to St. Louis to study at St. Mary’s Hospital to be a licensed practical nurse (LPN) in 1963. Her first assignment as an LPN was at St. Joseph Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1964. From January to June of 1965, her training was useful in a different setting as a child care worker and houseparent at St. Joseph Male Orphanage in Washington, Georgia. Back in St. Louis that June, she continued the same work at St. Joseph’s Home for Boys.
In 1973, she was assigned to St. Joseph Institute for the Deaf (SJI) in University City, Missouri, as a child care worker and houseparent. Sister Barbara Volk remembers, “Sister Jane continuously worked lovingly with our SJI deaf children. … She mothered these little ones as if they were her own.”
She ministered as an LPN at Riverside Nursing Home in Oconto, Wisconsin, from 1974 to 1975. S. Jean returned to SJI and served in several positions for the next 18 years: assistant recreation director, dining room manager and purchasing agent. After taking a sabbatical in 1993, she continued her service at SJI in 1994 as the purchasing coordinator and laundress. S. Jean retired in 2012 and lived with the Sacred Heart Community at the Carondelet Motherhouse. Two years later, she moved to Nazareth Living Center in St. Louis to join the ministry of prayer and presence.
Sister Rita McCormick says, “I am deeply blessed to have had time with her, and, in my heart, remains the stories she shared with me at Nazareth.”
By Sister Helen Oates